Your Pixel Watch now flags your risk of hypertension and diabetes

At the launch of the Pixel Watch 5, Google announced Health Guardian, a suite of features that detect trends from your health data and predict concerning physiologic changes, such as hypertension, diabetes, or sleep apnea. Google promised to roll it out “in fall,” and it’s now delivering on that commitment.

Starting today, three vital Health Guardian features, including blood pressure trends, insulin resistance trends, and sleep breathing quality, are now available for the Pixel Watch 3 and Watch 4, alongside the newly launched Pixel Watch 5. These three metrics join Breathing Emergency detection, which has been available on the Pixel Watch 4 and 5 since launch, but only in limited European countries.

These features work in the background by constantly tracking and analyzing vitals to detect changes or outliers. The Google Health app presents this data at the end of each month, highlighting not only problematic or alarming attributes but even the slightest changes. The idea isn’t to worry you, but to keep you informed and prepared, while prompting you to make any necessary lifestyle adjustments that could help reverse the effects.

Unlike the Galaxy Watch, which requires monthly calibration with an actual BP monitor, Google’s hypertension prediction works without one. However, it cannot actively measure BP on demand like the Galaxy Watch can.

Further, while insulin resistance and blood pressure trends show a summary every month, sleep and breathing quality details arrive every morning alongside your sleep summary, telling you exactly how much time you spent within the optimal breathing range. Data accumulated over weeks can then be used to inform you of the likelihood of sleep apnea.

In addition to the Pixel Watch models mentioned above, these features will soon also arrive for the Fitbit Air. However, while they’re free on the Pixel Watch, these insights will be limited to Google Health Premium subscribers using the Fitbit Air.